Dirty Leeds have accepted the FA’s charge of ‘failing to control our players’ during the clash in the recent game against Bolton Wanderers, and can now look forward to yet another fine.
It all kicked off in the second half of that game, after Josh Magennis had barged into Gjanni Alioski, leaving him injured near the touchline. Joe Williams then took it on himself to try drag Alioski to his feet, and Cooper rightly intervened to protect his colleague, bearing in mind that an injury can be exacerbated if the casualty is moved too soon by someone not medically qualified.
Up to that point the Leeds players were entirely blameless, but Klich then decided to grab a bottle and squirt water in Williams’ ear, before casually walking off and having a drink as all hell broke loose in front of him. Which was very funny, but we’re going to have to admit that it’s something he shouldn’t have done.
The fracas ended with Pontus Jansson and Bolton manager Phil Parkinson squaring up to each other, and these two were still exchanging unpleasantries as Parkinson was led off down the tunnel after receiving a red card for his part in the incident. Jansson has certainly got form for getting involved with opposing managers, having previously got in David Wagner’s face in the famous touchline spat at Huddersfield.
In the programme on Friday night Leeds United managing director Angus Kinnear wrote "In other news, after less than a week’s absence, we were able to rekindle our relationship with the FA’s disciplinary department, who cited us over the ‘handbags’ incident in the second half against Bolton Wanderers.”
"We have reluctantly accepted the charge of failing to control our players and chose not to mitigate our responsibility and point out quite how difficult it is to control a six-foot-four of raging Swede.” Which will of course draw the FA’s attention to Jansson’s part in the incident, although there have been no specific charges against individual players (Jansson and Klich perhaps being lucky in this respect).
Phil Parkinson has been less fortunate, and faces a charge of misconduct, which could well lead to a touchline ban. In his interview after the game he claimed to have been mystified as to why he was singled out when so many people had been involved.
He also claimed that Jansson had been the instigator, even though it was the conduct of two of his own players (Magennis and Williams) that led to the melee in the first place. Parkinson claims that he only got involved to try to separate the players and diffuse the situation, though we’ve seen in the past that his idea of calming things down is actually quite aggressive.
I remember our League Cup tie at Bradford in 2014 (when he was Bradford manager) and a similar set-to developed. Parkinson ran down the touchline and grabbed hold of Billy Sharp, even though Sharp was walking away from the incident by the time he got there. If Parkinson behaved in a similar fashion when he got involved this time it would be quite understandable that Jansson got annoyed with him.
So I’ve got no sympathy for Parkinson, but what level of punishment will Leeds get this time? Will the FA beat the £200,000 the Football League fined us for ‘Spygate’?